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Northland Age, Volume IV, Issue 50, 3 August 1908, Page 2

In the Middle Ages people knew not knives and forks, but ate with Nature’s implements—their fingers. Later they held the bread or meat in a napkin in their left hands, and cut off pieces with a dagger held in the right hand, the food being carried to the mouth on the knife, even in the most polite society. The next development was to have a special eating-knife instead of using the dagger, which might have been used for the despatch of an enemy. Each person person kept an eatingknife, and when he was invited out to dinner he brought his knife glong with him.

Forks were used in Venice in 997, but it was not till 1608 that a Venetian traveller—one Thomas Cory ate—introduced them into Britain. To eat with the fingers would seem, therefore to be not only natural, but to have been at one time q,uite correct, and even aristocratic.